A VISITOR attraction in York is celebrating pioneering ideas, great inventions and ground-breaking discoveries from the city’s age of Enlightenment with its latest exhibition.

Fairfax House’s Made in York exhibition, which runs until November 12, looks back at the long eighteenth century (1670-1830), a golden age for science, art and technology when some of the greatest polymaths called York home, making the city a crucible for enlightened thought.

Inventors and pioneers who feature in the exhibition include Martin Lister who pioneered medicine and research, as well as making significant contributions to chemistry, zoology and pharmacology, and William Lodge who created finely detailed topographical drawings not seen before outside London.

Craftsmen who forged their careers in York included cabinet maker Thomas Chippendale, stained glass painter Henry Gyles and Britain’s greatest carver Grinling Gibbons.

Hannah Phillip, director of Fairfax House, which is based in said: “York was notable as a centre for significant cultural, technological and artistic development. Nowhere outside the London metropolis could such an array of British talent be found in one place at that time.

“By celebrating the inventiveness, intellectualism and creativity that ran deep in York during the Enlightenment, we hope to encourage members of the public to understand more about this complex and fascinating city.”

Other icons celebrated in the exhibition include horologist Henry Hindley who created the world’s first telescope powered by a precision clock movement, enabling the telescope to remain fixed on its subject without constant adjustment because of the earth’s rotation. The telescope is on display courtesy of the Science Museum.

York’s pioneering architecture, which fused the contemporary with the ancient, is showcased through the work of Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, who was commissioned to create The Grand Assembly Room in 1731 and the nationally recognised and influential John Carr who designed Fairfax House itself. Admission to the exhibition is included in the entrance price to Fairfax House.